In this undated publicity photo from Dreamworks Pictures' film "The Island", Ewan McGregor (R) and co-star Scarlett Johansson make a desperate attempt to escape from their contained community. In this futuristic action thriller Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson) are trying to escape from their contained community once they realize that everyone, including themselves, is a human clone with the sole purpose of providing spare parts for their original human counterparts. The movie opens in the United States on July 22, 2005. Doug Hyun/Dreamworks/Handout

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In this undated publicity photo from Dreamworks Pictures' film "The...

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In this photo provided by DreamWorks Productions, Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson star in "The Island." (DreamWorks/ Doug Hyun)

Photo: DOUG HYUN

In this photo provided by DreamWorks Productions, Ewan McGregor and...

The glass-half-empty way of thinking about "The Island" is that it's a science fiction movie with a brilliant premise that collapses into a series of amusing but empty action-film cliches. The glass-half-full way is to observe the same thing but to see the film as an unusually amusing action movie with some brains behind it -- brains it doesn't always use well, or at all, but brains nonetheless.

The second way is the better way because it takes the movie on its own terms, and on its own terms, "The Island" is just fine. Yet appreciating it as a piece of propulsive entertainment -- lots of fun and all that -- doesn't preclude wishing that director Michael Bay had trusted the story enough to let it breathe a little. Between car chases and scenes of people hanging off the sides of skyscrapers, the movie actually raises some fascinating questions about science, morality and the nature of the soul -- questions with lots of contemporary relevance. It raises them, but doesn't linger on them, and so the balance is off: too much meat, not enough vegetables.

Like all good science fiction movies, it takes place in the future, in this case about 15 years from now. From what we see at the beginning, the United States, it seems, has become a fascist state, in which people live in controlled "sectors" underground in order to avoid contact with the earth's surface, which is contaminated. Their health is monitored. Their diet is controlled. Labor is manual, and they're all forced to wear white jumpsuits. The sexes are kept separate, though they can see each other and occasionally wave or say hello. Meanwhile, all around them are security guards, though who empowers these guards, as well as how they fit within the societal structure, is not understood or even, really, questioned.

But one citizen -- Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) -- is beginning to question everything. He is wondering about the meaning of his life, and he's having tantalizing dreams of being on the sea, on a yacht, even though he has never been on any kind of boat in his life. He is also having romantic fantasies about Jordan Two Delta, but then she's played by Scarlett Johansson, so that's only reasonable. Lincoln wants more out of life, and for some reason, that's considered threatening.

In the early minutes of the movie there is much talk about a place called "the island," a luxury paradise known as the only uncontaminated place on earth. Admission to the paradise is by lottery. Life inside the sector is, in effect, controlled by each person's hope of someday making it out.

The plot information I've related here so far is stuff you would know within the first five or 10 minutes of "The Island." No more needs to be said, though I'd be willing to bet that 90 percent of the reviews will give away the entire first hour of the story, so don't read them, unless you want to know. It's much better to watch the film wondering what's happening and having the nature of this future society gradually revealed. It's very clever. It would be nice to be able to say something more specific than "very clever," but this is the rare case where the choice is between writing a better review or preserving the film experience.

Though Johansson was lauded for her performance in "Lost in Translation," her acting in "The Island" constitutes her first truly adult work. Yes, she spends half the movie running and some of the rest hanging from buildings -- and her director cares more about demolishing cars than about human interaction -- and yet "The Island" constitutes an advance for her. For the time since "Manny and Lo," which she made as a child, she's listening to her fellow actors and reacting without any apparent consciousness of what her face happens to be doing. The cloud of adolescence is lifting, and she's able to be as spontaneous and inspired as she was at 11 years old. As for McGregor, it's just a pleasure to see him not doing a lukewarm imitation of Alec Guinness. "The Island" is a reminder of McGregor's roguish charm.

Of course, to be talking about the acting in a movie like "The Island" might be to miss the point. The movie is more about how many things Michael Bay can smash up -- lots. That might not be a talent most people respect, but it gets through to people anyway, and here Bay does it exceptionally well.